1. Field
The present work relates generally to radio communications and, more particularly, to radio communications that use a plurality of different radio links.
2. Background
Industry designers have recently reworked a portion of the stack in legacy Bluetooth devices to support different, high speed radios such as WiMedia (Ultra Wide Band) and WiFi, under substantially similar upper layer software. The product of this effort, called the AMP (Alternate MAC/PHY) architecture, is illustrated diagrammatically in FIG. 1.
As shown in FIG. 1, the AMP architecture provides for the use of multiple radio units, Radio1-RadioN, in addition to a Bluetooth (BT) radio unit. The additional radio units Radio1-RadioN support wireless communication on respective radio links other than the BT link. A selector arrangement 13 selects among the radio units and corresponding radio links for communication with remote external radio units. The architecture further includes a data processing portion, designated generally at 15, that implements operational processes 14 associated with the functionality of the device. Examples of the operational processes at 14 include data transfers (e.g., to flash cards, printers, user interfaces etc.) and control of user interfaces.
Referring again to the legacy BT device, an L2CAP software layer in the data processing portion interfaces between the BT radio unit and an upper level supervisory software layer that provides control for the BT radio unit and the operational processes of the legacy BT device. This interfacing includes interpreting operating conditions of the BT radio for the upper level layer. In the AMP architecture of FIG. 1, an intermediate level software layer 12 called a merging layer represents an expansion of the legacy L2CAP layer to include, in addition to the legacy function of interfacing the BT radio unit to the upper level layer 11, the further capability of interfacing between the upper level layer 11 and lower level software layers called physical abstraction layers, designated as PAL A-PAL N in FIG. 1. The upper layer 11 provides control for the radio units and the operational processes 14 in the FIG. 1 AMP architecture. The layers PAL A-PAL N abstract operating signals associated with the respectively corresponding radio units, Radio1-Radio N, so that the information abstracted from the signals may be conveniently processed by the upper layer 11. These PALs also translate information produced by the upper layer 11 into corresponding signaling suitable for the associated radio units.
It is desirable to provide a capability of interpreting information abstracted by a given one of the PALs in order to produce, as needed, a corresponding radio link condition report for use by the upper layer. It is further desirable to provide this capability in a layer below the upper layer, in order to avoid complexities in the upper layer design.